Many people are transitioning from reading physical books to reading eBooks, which have many advantages over physical books, such as more portability, the ability to access the eBook from multiple electronic devices, and text search capability. In addition, eBooks are also easier to purchase and are perceived as environmentally-friendly.
However, eBooks also suffer some drawbacks in comparison to physical books. For example, eBooks lack physical cues to tell a reader his or her current relative location in the book. In a physical book, a reader can readily ascertain the reader's current reading location relative to the entire book or another point by viewing the number of physical pages already read or remaining to be read. Readers use this information, for example, to determine whether to start reading a new chapter in an allotted reading period or whether to purchase a new book before departing on a trip. This information can be useful, but is still far from ideal since the reader may inaccurately estimate how long it will take to finish reading a chapter or other portion of text.
Reading devices for eBooks address this issue by providing readers with information intended to substitute for the lack of physical pages. For example, an eBook reader may present the reader with a page count (e.g., “Page 42 of 265”) or a user interface that visually represents the reader's current location in the eBook. This information is helpful but can still be improved. For instance, the page count can be misleading because different reading devices display differently-sized pages. As a result, readers lack information they would have with physical books.